Years have passed since home video game devices appeared, and recently a wide variety of amusing games have been developed. The video games are very popular for entertainment. Generally a home video game apparatus has 2 input means directly connected to its main body.
Consequently in the case of a software game played concurrently by three or more game players, the players operate two input means in turn in accordance with instructions of the software. But this way of using the input means is applicable only to certain types of games, such as a simulation game, etc. This has been a problem.
For software games, such as action games, shooting games, etc., which require players to operate input means in real time, adapters with a plurality of connection terminals to be connected to the input means have been developed. The input means are connected to the respective plural connection terminals, and the adaptor is connected to a connection terminal of a game apparatus body or a game console for the input means. The use of the adaptor allows players to simultaneously operate a plurality of input means to advance a game.
But in this conventional adaptor, control of the plural input means connected to the adaptor, such as monitoring of connection states of the input means, reading of data from the input means, etc., is conducted by the game console. Consequently the controlling of the input means and processing of input data by the game console are complicated, and is not applicable to games which require high-speed data processing.
An object of the present invention is to provide a multi-connection device which can supply data from a plurality of input means to a body of a game apparatus while reducing the data processing load on the game console.